Offering a conservative counterbalance to the extreme left-coast liberalism of The Huffington Post

Thursday, June 24, 2010

GENERAL STANLEY A. McCHRYSTAL IS PERHAPS ANOTHER LEONIDAS I

A smiling General Stanley A. McChrystal meets an unsmilingPresident Barack Hussein Obama aboard Air Force One on thetarmac in London Heathrow Airport for a 20 minute scolding..............................................................................................................

I AM NOT REALLY A CONSPIRACY NUT!

Although, since I am convinced that there has been (and continues to be) a cover-up of immense proportions by the left/liberal media of the fact that Barack Hussein Obama is not a Natural Born Citizen as that term is found in the US Constitution and as understood by our Founding Fathers and is therefore ineligible to be President of the United States and Commander-in-Chief of our armed forces, that probably qualifies me a conspiracy nut.

It is true that my favorite novel is a spy story or a murder mystery. Romantic novels have never interested me. But, give me a good spy story or a murder mystery and I cannot put it down until I finish the book.

Perhaps that is why I am intrigued by the mystery of why General Stanley A. McChrystal WITH HIS STAFF would grant an interview to a reporter with a known anti-war bias working for a journal, Rolling Stone, that has a well established reputation for being anti-war. Common sense would tell any intelligent person with even a little common sense that there was a possibility of the reporter and the magazine doing a ‘hatchet-job’ on the General and on the war in Afghanistan.

Now I trust that everyone will agree that Stanley A. McChrystal is a man of above average intelligence and possessed of above average common sense. His whole career has been a brilliant demonstration that he knows how to make the right decision even in the face of enemy fire.

So why did he do it?

Let’s just suppose that he had come to the reluctant conclusion that the war in Afghanistan is not winnable UNDER PRESIDENT BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA asCommander-in-Chief of the armed forces of the United States. Let’s suppose that he accepted the position as General in the field in Afghanistan confident that he could bring the President into an understanding of what would be necessary to win the ward. But what happened?

What happened was that he had virtually no access to the President. On the contrary, that 20 minute interview with the President in Air Force One sitting on the tarmac in England that was primarily a scolding, not a war planning meeting, revealed to him that he would never have access to the President and hence would never have the opportunity to bring the President around to a more realistic view of what would be necessary to win the war in Afghanistan.

The result: a growing realization that somehow he had to opt out of what he was now convinced was going to be a disaster for the U.S. and in doing so precipitate a national discussion about Afghanistan. But how to accomplish that, how to opt out?

As a career general officer he could never bring himself to quit. He is a fighter, not a quitter. So how to bring about a situation where his resignation would be seen not as a dereliction of duty, or, even worse, cowardice, but rather as necessitated by conditions not fully under his control.

So, he does what appears to all to be a stupid thing, he grants an interview to the Rolling Stone Magazine. But Stanley A. McChrystal is not stupid. He knows that if he and his staff members reveal their true feelings about some of the men surrounding the President as his chief advisors the reporter will report them. Whereas an interview with a more responsible reporter for a more responsible magazine might not quote them in order to protect them. And so he choses Rolling Stone Magazine, and its reporter does not hesitate to quote verbatim all of the explosive statements made in the interview, he is an experienced journalist..

There, the General has baited the trap: the President now has no choice but to ask for his resignation. And so he resigns, not because of publicly expressed disagreement with the President, as General McArthur did with President Harry Truman, but rather by saying what everyone knows:the Vice-President, the Ambassador and the Military Advisor to President Barack Hussein Obama are fools.

So, General McChrystal is summoned to meet with the President and he goes to the meeting with his resignation letter in hand. There is no argument. The President asks for the resignation and the General hands him the letter. Mission accomplished.

The common wisdom is that General McChrystal made a foolish mistake. But I say it was not a mistake but rather a brilliantly conceived plan to retire with honor while at the same time causing the nation to reexamine its commitment to fighting another losing war.

Afghanistan is not Iraq. It is not even Vietnam. It has never been a unified nation with a central government. It has always been an incredibly diverse collection of tribal groups ruled by many warlords. As a boy I remember watching in fascination the attempts of the British raj to conquer the region. Later we witnessed the failure of the Soviet Union which put 6,000,000 soldiers in the field in Afghanistan yet failed. The United States, along with a handful of token troops from NATO will never have more than 100,000 or so troops in Afghanistan. It is probably not a winnable war under Barack Hussein Obama as Commander-in-Chief, and it is probably not a winnable war under any President given the growing impatience of the American people.

I am confident that history will praise General Stanley A. McChrystal for sacrificing himself in order to bring about a reassessment of what the goals of the United States are in Afghanistan. I for one am willing to rank him with Leonidas I.

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UPDATE ON FRIDAY, 26 JUNE 10:

JUNE 25, 2010

McChrystal Forces Us to Focus

Now Petraeus owes us a candid assessment of the Afghan effort.

By PEGGY NOONAN

Gen. Stanley McChrystal's greatest contribution to the war in Afghanistan may turn out to be forcing everyone to focus on it. The real news there this week was not Gen. McChrystal's epic faux pas and dismissal but that 12 soldiers were killed on June 7-8, including five Americans by a roadside bomb, making that "the deadliest 24 hour period this year," as The Economist noted. Insurgency-related violence was up by 87% in the six months prior to March. Agence France-Presse reported Thursday that NATO forces are experiencing their deadliest month ever.

There have been signal moments in this war since its inception, and we are in the middle of one now.

It has gone on almost nine years. It began rightly, legitimately. On 9/11 we had been attacked, essentially, from Afghanistan, harborer of terrorists. We invaded and toppled the Taliban with dispatch, courage and even, for all our woundedness, brio. We all have unforgettable pictures in our minds. One of mine is the grainy footage of a U.S. cavalry charge, with local tribesman, against a Taliban stronghold. It left me cheering. You too, I bet.

But Washington soon took its eye off the ball, turning its focus and fervor to invading Iraq. Over the years, the problems in Afghanistan mounted. In 2009, amid a growing air of crisis, Secretary of Defense Bob Gates sacked the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David McKiernan—institutional Army, maybe a little old-style. He was replaced by Gen. McChrystal—specials forces background, black ops, an agile and resourceful snake eater. "Politicians love the mystique of these guys," said a general this week. Snake eaters know it, and wind up being even more colorful, reveling in their ethos of bucking the system.

Associated Press

U.S. Central Commander Gen. David Petraeus

Last August, Gen. McChrystal produced, and someone leaked, a 66-page report warning of "mission failure." More troops and new strategy were needed. The strategy, counterinsurgency, was adopted. That was a signal moment within a signal moment, for at the same time the president committed 30,000 more troops and set a deadline for departure, July 2011. The mission on the ground was expanded—counterinsurgency, also known as COIN, is nation building, and nation building is time- and troop-intensive—but the timeline for success was truncated.

COIN is a humane strategy not lacking in shrewdness: Don't treat the people of a sovereign nation as if they just wandered across your battlefield. Instead, befriend them, consult them, build schools, give them an investment in peace. Only America, and God bless it, would try to take the hell out of war. But the new strategy involved lawyering up, requiring troops to receive permission before they hit targets. Some now-famous cases make clear this has endangered soldiers and damaged morale.

The Afghan government, on which COIN's success hinges, is corrupt and unstable. That is their political context. But are we fully appreciating the political context of the war at home, in America?

The left doesn't like this war and will only grow more opposed to it. The center sees that it has gone on longer than Vietnam, and "we've seen that movie before." We're in an economic crisis; can we afford this war? The right is probably going to start to peel off, not Washington policy intellectuals but people on the ground in America. There are many reasons for this. Their sons and nephew have come back from repeat tours full of doubts as to the possibility of victory, "whatever that is," as we all now say. There is the brute political fact that the war is now President Obama's. The blindly partisan will be only too happy to let him stew in it.

Republican leaders such as John McCain are stalwart: This war can be won. But there's a sense when you watch Mr. McCain that he's very much speaking for Mr. McCain, and McCainism. Republicans respect this attitude: "Never give in." But people can respect what they choose not to follow. The other day Sen. Lindsey Graham, in ostensibly supportive remarks, said that Gen. David Petraeus, Gen. McChrystal's replacement, "is our only hope." If he can't pull it out, "nobody can." That's not all that optimistic a statement.

The U.S. military is overstretched in every way, including emotionally and psychologically. The biggest takeaway from a week at U.S. Army War College in 2008 was the exhaustion of the officers. They are tired from repeat deployments, and their families are stretched to the limit, with children reaching 12 and 13 without a father at home.

The president himself is in parlous position with regard to support, which means with regard to his ability to persuade, to be believed, to be followed. The latest Wall Street Journal/NBC poll shows more people disapprove of Mr. Obama's job performance than approve.

When he ran for president, Mr. Obama blasted Iraq but called Afghanistan the "good war." This was in line with public opinion, and as a young Democratic progressive who hadn't served in the military, he had to kick away from the old tie-dyed-hippie-lefty-peacenik hangover that dogs the Democratic Party to this day, even as heartless-warlike-bigot-in-plaid-golf-shorts dogs the Republicans. In 2009 he ordered a top-to-bottom review of Afghanistan. In his valuable and deeply reported book "The Promise," Jonathan Alter offers new information on the review. A reader gets the sense it is meant to be reassuring—they're doing a lot of thinking over there!—but for me it was not. The president seems to have thought government experts had answers, or rather reliable and comprehensive information that could be weighed and fully understood. But in Washington, agency analysts and experts don't have answers, really. They have product. They have factoids. They have free-floating data. They have dots in a pointillist picture, but they're not artists, they're dot-makers.

More crucially, the president asked policy makers, in Mr. Alter's words, "If the Taliban took Kabul and controlled Afghanistan, could it link up with Pakistan's Taliban and threaten command and control of Pakistan's nuclear weapons?" The answer: Quite possibly yes. Mr. Alter: "Early on, the President eliminated withdrawal (from Afghanistan) as an option, in part because of a new classified study on what would happen to Pakistan's nuclear arsenal if the Islamabad government fell to the Taliban."

That is always the heart-stopper in any conversation about Afghanistan, terrorists and Pakistan's nukes. But the ins and outs of this question—what we know, for instance, about the ISI, the Pakistani intelligence service, and its connections to terrorists—are not fully discussed. Which means a primary argument in the president's arsenal is denied him.

It is within the context of all this mess that—well, Gen. Petraeus a week and a half ago, in giving Senate testimony on Afghanistan, appeared to faint. And Gen. McChrystal suicide-bombed his career. One of Gen. McChrystal's aides, in the Rolling Stone interview, said that if Americans "started paying attention to this war, it would become even less popular."

Maybe we should find out. Gen. Petraeus's confirmation hearings are set for next week. He is a careful man, but this is no time for discretion. What is needed now is a deep, even startling, even brute candor. The country can take it. It's taken two wars. So can Gen. Petraeus. He can't be fired because both his predecessors were, and because he's Petraeus. In that sense he's fireproof. Which is not what he'll care about. He cares about doing what he can to make America safer in the world. That means being frank about a war that can be prosecuted only if the American people support it. They have focused. They're ready to hear.

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UPDATE, SUNDAY, 27 JUNE 2010

Sunday Jun 27, 2010Brits: McChrystal warned progress in Afghanistan could take years not monthsPresented by Microsoft.POLITICO.COM

By: MIKE ALLENJun 27, 2010 08:03 AM EST McCHRYSTAL's LAST BRIEFING TO NATO GAVE BLEAK OUTLOOK -- Years, not months -- The (British) Independent on Sunday: '[T]he 'runaway general' briefed defence ministers from Nato and the International Security Assistance Force earlier this month, and warned them not to expect any progress in the next six months. During his presentation, he raised serious concerns over levels of security, violence, and corruption within the Afghan administration. ... [T]he 'campaign overview' left behind by General McChrystal ... warned that ... a 'divergence of coalition expectations and campaign timelines' are among the key challenges faced ... [A] senior military source [said] that General McChrystal ... had been told by White House aides his 'time-frame was all wrong,' with the general thinking in years while the President was thinking more in months [to show progress] ... The general's departure is a sign of politicians 'taking charge of this war,' a senior [British] official said.'

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BARRY SOETORO aka BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA IS A USURPER He is not eligible to be President of the United Statesbecause he is not a Natural Born Citizen as required by Article Two, Section One, Clause Five of the United States Constitution.This is a fact REGARDLESS of where he was born (Mombassa, Hawaii, Chicago, Mecca or Mars). He is not eligible because he was not born of TWO PARENTS BOTH OF WHOM WERE UNITED STATES CITIZENS AT THE TIME OF HIS BIRTH as required by the Constitution. Barack Hussein Obama Jr. is not eligible to be President of the United States because – according to public admissions made by him – his “birth status was governed” by the United Kingdom. Obama further admits he was a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies at birth. Since Barack Hussein Obama Jr. was, if born in the state of Hawaii, a dual citizen, who – according to his own State Department – owed allegiance to the Queen of England and United Kingdom at the time of his birth – he cannot therefore be a “natural born” citizen of the US according to Article 2, Section 1, Clause 5 of the US Constitution. His father, who did not live in the United States for more than a couple of years, was a subject/ciitizen of Kenya/Great Britain at the time of Barack’s birth and afterwards, AND further, as Barack himself admitted on his website during the 2008 campaign, Barack was therefore born SUBJECT TO THE GOVERNANCE OF GREAT BRITAIN. Here is a direct quote from Obama's "Fight the Smears/Fact Check" 2008 website: ‘When Barack Obama Jr. was born on Aug. 4,1961, in Honolulu, Kenya was a British colony, still part of the United Kingdom’s dwindling empire. As a Kenyan native, Barack Obama Sr. was a British subject whose citizenship status was governed by The British Nationality Act of 1948. That same act governed the status of Obama Sr.‘s children…’ “ The FACT that he was not born of TWO US CITIZEN PARENTS is all that matters. The question of his birth certificate is a distraction (a distraction fostered by Obama’s supporters?) that ought not to occupy our time and resources. BUT if you are really convinced of the value of the COLB (certificate of live birth) that Obama posted on his website, see this: http://www.scribd.com/doc/9830547/Sun-Yatsen-Certification-of-Live-Birth-in-Hawaii Also, it is possible that he is not a United States citizen at all through his mother if he was born in Kenya, as three witnesses have testified. The reason is because his mother could not pass her US citizenship on to her son because she did not live continuously in the United States for five full years after her fourteenth birthday as required by the US immigration law in effect during that period of time. Check it out: http://www.TheObamaFile.com/ObamaNaturalBorn.htm Also, an excellent introductory primer on Obama Presiidential Eligibility is to be found at: http://people.mags.net/tonchen/birthers.htm His usurpation can only be corrected (1) by Congress through his Impeachment and Removal [something which will never happen in a Congress controlled by Pelosi/Reid], or (2) it can be corrected by his resignation, which could happen if the public presssure on him to resign becomes great enough, or (3) by his removal by the United States Supreme Court affirming a Quo Warranto decision of the United States Federal District Court for the District of Columbia [which process Attorney General Eric Holder would never allow to even begin] or (4) by an amendment to the Constitution, which will never happen because that again would require the agreement of a Congress controlled by Pelosi/Reid. _ HERE IS THE QUESTION WHICH EVERY AMERICAN CITIZEN SHOULD BE ASKING HIS OR HER CONGRESSMAN AND SENATORS “During the 2008 election, then Senator Obama published a statement at his website which said that his birth status was ‘governed’ by the British Nationality Act of 1948. Can you please tell me, and the American people, how a person governed - at birth - by British law, can be a natural born citizen of the United States and thus constitutionally eligible to be President of the United States?” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FlEbBZLzo0

If you really want to understand the difference between the technical terms natural born citizen, native born citizen, naturalized citizen and just plain citizen, go to:

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About Me

A Texan who loves the truth and hates the lying, cheating, and deliberate prevarication that characterizes so much of our civic discourse these days.
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RIPOSTE, n. 1. Fencing: a quick thrust after parrying a lunge 2. a quick sharp return in speech or action; counterstroke.
- The Random House Dictionary of the English Language...........
You can contact me by sending an email to me at: leorugiens23@gmail.com